A cooperative of young people, with support from the State thanks to the Agropole programme, have launched into industrial pineapple farming 15 kilometres outside Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. They are building a factory in which they will process their pineapple production.
The vast 100 ha domain is already visible on their site in Awae. Jean Baptiste Kouam, President of the Cooperative of Pineapple Producers in Awae, which groups together 10 or so young producers, proudly says that “what you see here is only a tiny part of the project that we are carrying out here”. He states that “Concerning production challenges, we are currently at 16,000 tons, the specification documents predict 26,000 tons. Over the next three months we will reach our expectations. We already have our first buyer who is an exporter. He buys for Europe. For processing, we are currently building a factory to produce fruit juices on site”.
There are dormitories on the domain for the one hundred or so mostly young workers. Mr Kouam, who has had support from the beginning from the State through the Agropole programme, is confident in their investment. He is already thinking of branching out into other crops such as maize and plantain bananas which will soon be growing alongside the pineapples.